Speech

Suite for Toy Piano

Fads & Fancies in the Academy (A Gentle Satire on Progressive Education)

(Choreography by Marsha Barsky and Erin Law, informed by original 1940 choreography and notes of Marian Van Tuyl)

Inlets

Water Walk

Passing Through Homage to John Cage, for marimba, electronic sounds, and spoken word, collaboratively created with chance operations by Michael Slayton, Stan Link, Jim Lovensheimer.

MinEvent

VORTEX

And former dancers of the

MERCE CUNNINGHAM DANCE COMPANY

Amores

Child of Tree layered with

The Wonderful Widow of 18 Springs & Nowth Upon Nacht

Credo In Us

Biography

Michael Holland straddles the ephemeral boundaries between percussion, theater, and movement. He serves on the music faculty of Vanderbilt University’s Blair School of Music where he is Artistic Director of Blair Percussion VORTEX, a group he describes as “a playground of invention, a virtual sandbox inviting actors, dancers, musicians, engineers—artists of all stripes—to ‘play’ in the sand.” VORTEX was named 2010’s “Best Next-­‐Wave Student Music Ensemble” by Nashville Scene arts critic Russell Johnston, who closed the citation with: “ ‘Downtown’ ain’t just for New Yorkers anymore.”

Among his many teachers, Holland considers the years in private study with Paula Culp, of the Minnesota Orchestra, and Earl Yowell, of the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, to be the most influential in his professional life.

His freelance percussion credits include numerous performances and recordings with the Minnesota Orchestra, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, and the Minnesota Opera Orchestra. As a section player on the University of Minnesota Northrup Dance Series, he worked for the Bolshoi, Joffrey, American Ballet Theatre, and San Francisco Ballet. He was a section percussionist in the 1992 Spoleto and 1993 Waterloo Festival orchestras, worked in the pit for the renowned Guthrie Theater, and performed on numerous projects with the American Composers’ Forum at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.

In his formative years Holland studied drama, music, and movement, anticipating a career that would meld these disciplines into a unique hybrid. Today, his most interesting projects take shape in the creative nexus where percussion and broad, theatrical concepts merge. A fondness for theater, film, circus arts and physical performance define his drive to push the nature of presentation beyond academic convention. He works extensively with visionary composer/producer Mary Ellen Childs. For five years he was a core player in her theatrically charged percussion group CRASH, with tours including St. Petersburg, Russia and San Francisco’s Other Minds Festival. Cirque du Soleil cast him as percussionist and featured taiko drummer in Dralion.

Meet the Composer, the Minnesota Arts Board, and the Curb Center at Vanderbilt have awarded supporting grants allowing him to curate and produce thematically-­‐ driven percussion events that incorporate lighting design, staging, film, modern dance, uncommon collaborations, and the breaking of conventional performance practices. He is currently producing a large-­‐scale John Cage retrospective concert, featuring VORTEX with former dancers of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, rare archival photographs, and historic film and audio clips. Michael Holland attended the University of Wisconsin and Mount Senario College, earning his BS degree in Music Education, followed by an MA degree in Percussion Performance at Eastern Illinois University. He is an endorsing artist for Vic Firth Percussion.

Blair Choral Rehearsal Hall

1:30 – 2:30 “John Cage and the Conundrum of Politics”
- David Patterson, musicologist (Chicago)

2:30 – 3:30 “John Cage and Fluxus”
- Amelia Winger-Bearskin, performance artist (VU)

3:30 – 3:45 coffee break

3:45 – 4:15 “John Cage and Marian van Tuyl, choreographer, at Mills College”
- Joanna G. Harris, PhD, dance historian; archivist, Marian van Tuyl Collection
Screening: Horror Dream

4:15 – 5:00 “John Cage and Avant-Garde Film”
Screening: In Between and one 11 with 101
Discussion with Stan Link, composer (VU); Jonathan Rattner, filmmaker (VU)

Art can soothe, it can inspire, but it also stirs heated passions and outright protest. Why does that happen, and why in some cases but not others? That’s the subject of the new book, “Not Here, Not Now, Not That! Protest Over Art and Culture in America.” Its author is Steven Tepper, a sociologist and associate director of the Curb Center for Art, Enterprise and Public Policy at Vanderbilt University.

Read the full interview here.

We’re looking for two or three teams,
each consisting of at least a composer, a lyricist, a playwright, and a director.

Each team will create a 20- to 30- minute original musical for semi-staged readings late in spring semester.

Development of works will be mentored by Vanderbilt University Professor Jim Lovensheimer and by members of the New York professional musical theatre community.

Go to our website for contact information: www.vanderbiltcreativecampus.org

While the military has made the goal of increased cultural knowledge and awareness a priority since the mid-2000s, these developments have yet to be accounted for as part of a broad inter-agency conversation among military and non-military stakeholders. The increasing relevance of the military’s approaches to cultural challenges to the work of other government agencies and non-governmental actors, including diplomacy, development, and humanitarian relief, makes the present moment opportune for a fruitful exchange regarding the relationship of culture to security.

The conference will be webcast here on Friday. The webcast will begin approximately 10 minutes after the posted meeting time. You will need Windows Media Player to watch the webcast. Download the free player here.

See Program and Overview below.

Accounting for Culture in the Military:
Implications for Future Humanitarian Cooperation

December 9, 2011

10:00 a.m.                  Welcome

+++++++++++++++++ Michael Van Dusen
+++++++++++++++++ Executive Vice President and COO
+++++++++++++++++ Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars

+++++++++++++++++Bill Ivey
+++++++++++++++++Director, Curb Center for Art, Enterprise and Public Policy
+++++++++++++++++Vanderbilt University

10:15 a.m.                  Cultural Education and Training

++++++Moderator:    Clementine Fujimura
+++++++++++++++++Professor, Department of Languages and Cultures
+++++++++++++++++U.S. Naval Academy

++++++Panelists:
+++++++++++++++++Brian Selmeski
+++++++++++++++++Deputy Director, Outreach, Planning and Policies
+++++++++++++++++Air Force Culture and Language Center
+++++++++++++++++Air War College

+++++++++++++++++Robert Rubinstein
+++++++++++++++++Professor, Anthropology and International Relations
+++++++++++++++++Maxwell School
+++++++++++++++++Syracuse University

+++++++++++++++++Rochelle Davis
+++++++++++++++++Center for Contemporary Arab Studies
+++++++++++++++++Georgetown University; Wilson Center

11:15 a.m.                  Rise of the Military Culture Analyst

++++++Moderator:    Robert Albro
+++++++++++++++++School of International Service
+++++++++++++++++American University

++++++Panelists:
+++++++++++++++++Kerry Fosher
+++++++++++++++++Center for Advanced Operational Culture Learning
+++++++++++++++++Marine Corps

+++++++++++++++++Carter Malkasian
+++++++++++++++++Director, Stability and Development Program
+++++++++++++++++Center for Naval Analyses

+++++++++++++++++Martin Short
+++++++++++++++++Military Liaison
+++++++++++++++++British Embassy

12:30 p.m.                  Luncheon

++++++Speaker:        Steve Coll
+++++++++++++++++President
+++++++++++++++++New America Foundation

2:00 p.m.                    Military Cultural Heritage Resource Management

++++++Moderator:     Lynn Nicholas
+++++++++++++++++Independent Researcher

++++++Panelists:
+++++++++++++++++Laurie Rush
+++++++++++++++++Archaeologist and Program Manager
+++++++++++++++++Cultural Resources Management
+++++++++++++++++U.S. Army

+++++++++++++++++Fred Hiebert
+++++++++++++++++Archaeologist and National Geographic Fellow
+++++++++++++++++National Geographic Society

+++++++++++++++++Patty Gerstenblith
+++++++++++++++++Distinguished Research Professor
+++++++++++++++++DePaul University

3:00 p.m.                    Summary Remarks

+++++++++++++++++Bill Ivey
+++++++++++++++++Director, Curb Center for Art, Enterprise and Public Policy
+++++++++++++++++Vanderbilt University

Accounting for Culture in the Military:
Implications for Future Humanitarian Cooperation

This one-day conference, organized by Vanderbilt University’s Curb Center for Art, Enterprise, and Public Policy and hosted by the program in United States Studies at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington D.C., builds directly upon the success of the Curb Center’s Arts Industries Policy Forum. Since 2003, this forum has convened cultural policy experts and government decision-makers to discuss the policy implications of key cultural issues through a participant-driven, nonpartisan program of information exchange. This has included attention to the implications of culture for national security, as represented by 2008’s Cultural Diplomacy and the National Interest, and which the present conference actively extends. As host, the Wilson Center’s program in United States Studies has a track record of attention to complementary concerns, including: the relationship between U.S. culture and Muslims in the U.S., the domestic impacts of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the work of citizen diplomacy. As partners, the Curb and Wilson centers are well-prepared to take the next step to examine the varied connections between culture and security in greater depth.

This conference takes that step focusing specifically upon the U.S. military’s efforts to develop cultural expertise and the forms that this expertise is currently taking. While the military has made the question of culture a focus of particular attention starting in the mid-2000s, in the process elaborating doctrinal, strategic, and operational ways both of understanding and applying cultural knowledge, this conference seeks to build a broader inter-agency conversation among military and non-military stakeholders about implications of the U.S. military’s several approaches to cultural problem-solving. If these approaches are non-traditional for the military, they are nevertheless becoming increasingly relevant to the work of other government agencies and non-governmental actors, across a wide array of efforts in diplomacy, development, and humanitarian relief, among others.  This makes the present moment a good one for a fruitful exchange with stakeholders across government and outside of government regarding the ways that the military understands the relationship of culture to security.

Rationale

That the purposes, methods, and organization of the U.S. military have changed dramatically since the Cold War is now taken largely for granted. Nowhere have these changes been more evident than in the pursuit by the military in recent years to increase its cultural understanding, and to incorporate cultural knowledge into its operations. And while the military’s cultural turn has been widely noted, most often as represented by the so-called “Petraeus doctrine” of culture-centric counterinsurgency, implications of the military’s turn to culture are still not widely recognized or well-understood beyond the military itself.

This turn is not illustrated by a single overarching approach, so much as by multiple parallel approaches across the services meeting a variety of different needs, among them: training and education, cultural intelligence and analysis, and culturally-informed decision-making in theater, including cultural heritage resource management. As the military has developed a variety of culture-based policies, programs, and operational goals to meet its current mission requirements, these developments have remained largely siloed within the DoD. But, as present and future military missions increasingly include traditionally non-military dimensions, forms of expertise, and priorities, civil-military collaborations are becoming more regular and routine. This makes the need for a more comprehensive inter-agency understanding of the military’s particular approaches to culture more urgent, both at present and during peacetime after the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have wound down.

Since the military’s commitment to cultural capacity-building has been widely discussed, we will not rehearse the details of this story here. But, briefly, the more important drivers include the following: 1) In broad terms, post-Cold War and post-9/11 realities have been regularly referenced by the U.S. policy community using “clash of civilizations” frameworks, for which soft power becomes a crucial tool, and which are understood in essence as cultural conflicts; 2) for the military this has meant refocusing basic objectives toward waging asymmetric warfare, that is, unconventional conflicts among non-state actors and with culturally distinct populations; 3) for which counterinsurgency doctrine, requiring significant awareness of and sustained engagement with non-combatant cultural communities, has become the answer; 4) and where its ongoing missions in Iraq and Afghanistan have spurred the military to seek to rapidly raise its perceived “cultural knowledge gap” and to build up a sustainable cultural capacity.

5) Paralleling these developments, as the U.S. military’s global footprint has shifted significantly away from preparing for the next large conventional conflict, its logistical capabilities have been utilized as a first responder and global backstop for diverse humanitarian disasters, ranging from the 2004 Banda Aceh Tsunami to the 2010 Haiti earthquake; 6) As a humanitarian agency, the military must frequently coordinate with such diverse civilian and NGO actors as the United Nations Development Programme, USAID, the Department of State, other development, refugee, and human rights organizations, and including the Smithsonian; 7) If many of these activities are incorporated into counterinsurgency efforts in Afghanistan (often in the form of civil-military cooperation on provincial reconstruction or civil affairs teams), they are also recognized parts of military doctrine as “operations other than war” (MOOTW) or as “stability, security, transition and reconstruction operations” (SSTR), 8) which complexly combine work in development, diplomacy, peace-keeping, human rights, governance, and reconciliation, among other activities, requiring an in-depth concern for relevant “socio-cultural dynamics.”

The increase in civil-military collaborations in this changing environment of military cultural initiatives has also been characterized by regular reaching out to new interlocutors, in government, in academia, and in the private sector. This involves a broad range of “culture experts” historically not looked to by the military, and including: sociocultural anthropologists, archaeologists, cultural geographers, cultural psychologists,  people with backgrounds in communications, international relations, cultural studies, and other subject matter experts from the humanities (e. g. experts in Arabic literature). However, such military-academic relationships can present conceptual, practical, and even ethical, dilemmas, where differences in background and training, in conceptual framing, and in modes of analysis can mean that potential collaborators find it challenging to bridge these divides. They are often working with different definitions of culture and its relationship to policy in the first place, which makes constructive exchanges about cultural interpretation, analysis, assessment, or metrics, difficult to achieve.

Another collaborative challenge, in the context of inter-agency whole-of-government efforts, is that the different historical roles of stakeholders lead to distinct assumptions about best practices and tools, which can be perceived as competitive rather than complementary. Finally, discussions of new cultural initiatives that require coordination across agencies, such as standing up rapid cultural response teams dedicated to helping secure national heritage or patrimonies in the aftermath of humanitarian disasters, also create new working relationships between the military and counterparts, which would benefit from substantial ground clearing. For these reasons, this conference seeks to open up a space for dialogue about military-culture efforts along the frontier of potential collaborations between military and non-military counterparts.

Organization of the event

This is a one-day conference, and expanded version of the Curb Center’s Arts Industries Policy Forum, which seeks to convene military and non-military stakeholders to promote constructive dialogue about the relationship of the military’s cultural work to that of counterparts, in the context of broader inter-agency discussion and engagement with culturally-relevant challenges in development, diplomacy, and humanitarian work, and related efforts. The conference will be organized around three round table-style panels, each of which will address a distinct and emerging area of military cultural capacity-building: 1) cultural education and training; 2) cultural analysis and assessment; 3) and cultural heritage resource management.

The schedule will feature two morning panels, a lunch with plenary speaker, an afternoon panel, and a concluding summation. Each panel will feature between four and six participants, and each panel will convene a diversity of perspectives representing military, non-military, academic, policy and practitioner backgrounds. As a round-table discussion, each panel is designed to be maximally participatory as a way to generate productive exchanges between panelists and between each panel and the other conference attendees. To best orient each panel conversation, brief framing discussions that lay out pertinent issues will be shared with all panelists beforehand, to which they can both refer and respond. In anticipation of the meeting, in addition, a landscape document will be shared with all participants, laying out the broad framework for the discussion to follow. We anticipate this conference will result in a published summary that can be used as a roadmap for constructive military-civilian dialogue about shared cultural policy and practice, going forward.

Panel I: Cultural Education and Training

The U.S. military establishment also includes an entire Professional Military Education System internal to the Department of Defense. This system includes more than the four service academies, educates both undergraduates and graduates, and employs full-time faculty in ways comparable to the civilian system of higher education in the U.S. In addition, the PME system also provides significant training, including pre-deployment training and mid-career development. More recently, this has included more emphasis upon language, area studies, and cultural training. At the Naval Academy, the Marine Corps’ Center for Advanced Operational Culture Learning, the Air Force Culture and Language Center, the Army’s Training and Doctrinal Command, and the Naval Post-Graduate School, among other institutions, cultural skills and “cross-cultural competence” are receiving priority. This panel will discuss what cultural education and training looks like in the military, including curricula, foreign area studies, authoritative scholarly and other influences, the uses of gaming and simulation technologies for culture training, and compare these to the sources of culture knowledge, experience, and expertise, among non-military counterparts engaged in collaborative work with the military, in particular as these either overlap or clearly diverge.

II. Rise of the Military Culture Analyst

In particular in the context of counterinsurgency, the military has sought ways to obtain better cultural understanding of theaters of conflict. This knowledge is, in turn, institutionalized in ways conversant with already established military priorities and information needs. Cultural knowledge, therefore, has become knowledge of the “cultural terrain,” and “human terrain analysis” has become a basic part of the work of “cultural intelligence,” or the “cultural preparation of the environment.” In short, military cultural analysis reflects specific forms of training and military priorities, and it is being integrated into the DoD landscape in particular ways, such as the interdisciplinary development of computational and predictive sociocultural modeling tools.  Another way is as part of a new area studies-type capacity that emphasizes the incorporation of civilian sociocultural expertise in centers of excellence, as these are made an integral part of the capacity of regional combatant commands like AFRICOM or CENTCOM. If AFRICOM is any indication, these commands will become a particular locus for the kinds of non-kinetic and non-traditional culturally-informed humanitarian work of “defense, diplomacy, and development.” These are also examples of new kinds of civil-military partnerships, where academic and inter-agency expertise will be routinely mobilized in the analysis and interpretation of global regions. This panel will address the role of military cultural analytics for such collaborative enterprises.

III. Military Cultural Heritage Resource Management

The military has belatedly come to recognize the importance of both tangible and intangible heritage as dimensions of cultural security in Iraq, Afghanistan, and more recently, in Haiti and elsewhere. This is in part a response to the global emergence of “heritage” as a source of conflict, and as the subject of new international legal frameworks supporting its identification and conservation. For the military, cases like the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan, the looting of the Baghdad museum, as well as the illegal antiquities trade, have demonstrated the negative consequences of ignoring cultural heritage in the battle for public support and cooperation in theaters of operation. At the same time, the military-civilian efforts to preserve Haiti’s cultural treasures after the recent earthquake have demonstrated the cultural diplomacy potential of military humanitarian intervention. The military continues to incorporate methods and best practices that combine both cultural resource management and participatory cultural mapping, working with local cultural communities to articulate their own cultural priorities. Such efforts have clear parallels in the work of international development and human rights professionals, but as yet there has been little to no conversation among stakeholders about the implications and methods of this work.

On Saturday, December 3rd at 7:00pm, the Blair School of Music will welcome the 4th Annual State of the Word to Ingram Hall featuring the region’s top college, high school, and middle school poets and spoken word artists. Participating poets have received standing ovations in front of TEDxNashville, Leadership Nashville, and the Tennessee State Senate. They have performed at CMT, Schermerhorn Symphony Center, Metropolitan Council, TPAC, and the Franklin Theatre. A performance from last year’s sell-out show of Sarratt Cinema was heard on WPLN earlier this year. Come witness this powerful art form and support the next generation of writers, thinkers, artists, and leaders.

The event is a collaboration between Vandy Spoken Word and Southern Word. Vandy Spoken Word is Vanderbilt’s spoken word group which promotes self-expression, challenges prejudices, and gives voice to diverse perspectives. Southern Word is a non-profit youth development organization building a culture of literacy through spoken word residencies, workshops, and shows.

The event is made possible through the generous support of the Blair School of Music, Commons at Vanderbilt, Vanderbilt’s Bishop Joseph Johnson Black Cultural Center, Metro Nashville Arts Commission, Tennessee Arts Commission, National Endowment for the Arts, the Vanderbilt Writing Studio, and the Curb Center for Arts, Enterprise, and Public Policy. Proceeds go to benefit Southern Word and the placement of poet mentors in Middle Tennessee’s public schools.

We are pleased to announce the Spring 2012 Humanities 161 course, “Creativity and Crisis.”

Everyday is a new crisis. We are surrounded by global forces that challenge leaders and citizens to live, work, and govern differently. But, do we have the creative capacity to respond to these crises in ways that advance social wellbeing, justice, peace and prosperity? When the old ways of knowing and expression are no longer sufficient to meet the demands of a new situation, what types of creativity are required?

“Creativity and Crisis” will be team-taught by professors Bruce Barry, Owen School of Management; Vanessa Beasley, Department of Communication; Steven Tepper, Department of Sociology; and Mel Ziegler, Department of Art. This course looks at crisis events (911, Iraq War, Nashville Flood, etc.) and our collective memory of them to introduce questions about the complicated and critical nature of the interaction between crisis and creativity.

Students will explore topics such as the financial crisis, consumerism, the environment, natural disasters, globalization, and artful protest with the interdisciplinary team of professors and expert guest speakers.

HUM161 courses have become well-known on Vanderbilt campus for their team-taught, interdisciplinary approach and commitment to challenging students to explore topics around current events with outstanding guest lecturers in classroom. The College of Arts & Sciences offers this course through the support of a grant from an anonymous patron. Previous HUM161 courses include “War in the Classroom” and “New Global Crisis: Earth’s Energy and Water Resources in the 21st century.”

Please encourage students to register for this one-time course.

The fall 2011 Curb Creative Leadership Lecture features Robert Levine. He has written for Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, and the arts and business sections of the New York Times. In his first book, Free Ride, Levine charts how the media industry lost control of its destiny after laws made it possible for companies such as YouTube to build businesses on copyrighted content. This lecture contributes to the ongoing discussion facilitated by the Curb Center on the vitality of expressive life and creative enterprise in the United States. The lecture will be held in the First Amendment Center Lecture Hall, Vanderbilt University, 1801 Edgehill Ave.